Wild Reeds (Techine, 1994): Cinema Museum, 2pm
This is a 35mm screening.Chicago Reader review:
Though I liked his criticism for Cahiers du Cinema in the 60s, on the
basis of five of his early films I haven’t been a big fan of Andre
Techine. But this wonderful and masterful feature (1994), his 12th,
suggests that maybe he’d just been tooling up. It’s one of the best
movies from an excellent French television series of fiction features on
teenagers of the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, and it’s the first to be
released in the U.S. If Techine’s French Provincial (1974) evoked in
some ways the Bertolucci of The Conformist, this account of kids living
in southwest France in 1962, toward the end of the Algerian war, has
some of the feeling, lyricism, and sweetness of Bertolucci’s Before the
Revolution–though it’s clearly the work of someone much older and wiser.
The main characters, all completing their baccalaureate exam at a
boarding school, include a boy struggling with his homosexual desire for
a close friend, an older student who’s a right-wing opponent of
Algerian nationalism, and a communist girl, the daughter of one of the
teachers, who befriends the homosexual and falls for the older student
in spite of their violent political differences. One remembers these
characters and others as vividly as old friends, and Techine’s handling
of pastoral settings is as exquisite as his feeling for period. Winner
of Cesar awards (the French equivalent of Oscars) for best picture,
director, screenplay, and “new female discovery” (Elodie Bouchez). With
Frederic Gorny, Gael Morel, Stephane Rideau, and Michele Moretti (who’s
best known for her work with Jacques Rivette).
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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